


The Ghost of You

by RuskanLintu



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Drug Withdrawal, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Songfic, Sorry Not Sorry, Vietnam War, i apologise in advance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuskanLintu/pseuds/RuskanLintu
Summary: At the end of the world, they find a home in each other.





	The Ghost of You

**Author's Note:**

> For Kata.

_All the smiles that are ever gonna haunt me_

 

He'd never admit it, but Dave feels sorry for the new one.  
He feels sorry for everyone forced to fight in this hell, but the scrawny, trembling guy seems so lost, so detached from the reality he got into that it hurts to watch him try to adjust and fail miserably every time. 

It's mostly concern and little pity that makes him get up from his seat and introduce himself. The new one - Klaus, he learns – shakes his hand and Dave can't help but smile in a sad attempt to be reassuring. It's an empty smile, the kind you give people who are doomed to die anyway, the kind that isn't meant to liften spirits but to ease the inevitable passing. There's simply no hope left in this place, no heart to spare.

And yet, the smile Klaus gives him in return is a real one, all shiney eyes and laugh lines. Even frightened out of his mind he clearly hasn't given up.

Maybe, Dave thinks, maybe he has yet to realise that a smile won't save his or anybody's life. That it won't protect him from the bullets, bombs, and grenades that will soon buzz around them once again, like a swarm of perpetually hungry and particularly deadly flies you can't swat away. 

But in this moment, he feels something akin to hope. 

And he holds on to that.

 

_For all the ghosts that are never gonna catch me_

 

Klaus is hiding behind a tree, throwing up until he feels like his stomach might come up next. It's mostly bile now, the meagre contents of his stomach long gone. His entire body is trembling and soaked in cold sweat, and his head feels like it might explode any moment. The voices of the dead are back, and out here in the jungle there's nothing he can do to drown them out. They're joined by the screams of the living, terrified and helpless. A cold shiver runs down his spine and he heaves again.

'Are you okay?'

The sudden voice makes him jump and he mutters a curse under his breath. A wave of nausea hits him and he has to close his eyes for a few seconds before he manages to croak out an answer.

'Yeah. Just… peachy.'

Dave gives him a worried look that Klaus chooses to ignore. He prefers to suffer in privacy, but right now he's just too damn tired to ask the other man to leave.

(A small, needy part of him doesn't want him to.)

Slowly, Klaus lowers himself to the ground beside the tree, never letting go of the trunk, never making eye contact with Dave. The smell of his own vomit is so overwhelming that he feels like throwing up again. Dragging a dirty hand across his face, he doesn't even notice that Dave has sat down next to him.

'Do you want to talk about it?'

Klaus huffs. 'You wouldn't believe me anyway,' he says with a humourless chuckle.

Dave shrugs and nudges Klaus' arm with his elbow. 'Come on. Try me.'

Klaus clears his throat and tries to think of way to tell the soldier the truth (or something similar to the truth), but the pounding headache and the tremor running through his body make it impossible to form a clear thought. 'I'm a junkie from the future, who can commune with the dead. I haven't had a fix in days and now I see the ghosts of fallen soldiers everywhere. I have no idea where I am, _when_ I am, or if I'll ever get back. All I know is that I got into this mess because I stole a _briefcase_.' He gives Dave a crooked grin. 'Satisfied?'

'Quite.' Dave smiles. If he doesn't believe him, he doesn't let it on. 'We're in the A Shau Valley, Vietnam, by the way. August 1968. I'm not too sure about the month, though.' The smile has vanished, a grim expression has taken its place. Or maybe it's sadness? Dave's eyes have darted to the dark jungle in front of them but they're unfocused, seeing something entirely else.

'What were you doing? Back home, I mean?' Klaus inquires. It's hit or miss, but he finds that he can't stand to stay silent, to pretend he hasn't noticed.

Dave sighs. 'I was a teacher for English and art. At a primary school. I have no family at home, but I'd like to come back alive. For the kids, you know?'

Klaus nods but none of them speaks because now there's truly nothing left to say.

Dave doesn't ask whether they're going to win this war. Klaus doesn't tell him.

And maybe it doesn't matter.

When he dry-heaves again, he feels a warm, calloused hand in his neck, that wanders higher and finally settles on his head, combing through the grimy curls.

Maybe that's all that matters.

And maybe, maybe it's enough.

 

_All the things that you never ever told me_

 

One night, they get ridiculously drunk. The bar is tiny and the booze cheap, but Klaus has never been a picky drinker.

The dancing helps them to take their mind off the dead and dying, at least for a few hours, and when the amber liquid has finally clouded their minds, they forget about the ghosts, the enemies lurking in the dark. They mingle with the folks gathered under the flickering lights of the disco and move to the steady beat of the music because it's _alive_ , as a human heartbeat should be but more often than not isn't. For one night, they forget that they've come to kill and it feels good.

Nobody questions the sense of this war anymore. Not Dave, not Klaus, and certainly not the Vietnamese civilians and soldiers they dance and laugh with, because frankly, it's not their war. Maybe it was, at some point long ago, but their blunt survival instinct has taken over and leaves no room for much else.

They should cry, and scream, and protest, lay down their weapons and make peace.  
Instead, they raise their glasses and drink more, just in case there's no tomorrow for them.

When the two of them retreat to a silent corner, so loose-boned that they barely manage to walk a straight line, Dave can't help but think how _right_ it feels to be here, when it should feel so _wrong_. They're stuck in hell on earth and yet he laughs. He's happy, maybe happier than he's ever been, in this place where soldiers – American and Vietnamese alike – are dying like flies. He feels guilty, disrespectful, and so utterly _confused_ about what's meant to be and what has come to be. About _who_ has come.

His hand touches Klaus' cheek before his brain even registers the motion, and for a second he's overcome by the urge to draw his hand back, to laugh it off, to pretend nothing happened – because that's all he's good at, pretending.  
But the other man closes his eyes and leans into the touch - _maybe he's just as tired of pretending?_ \- and there's no reason for it anyway.

The kiss tastes like cheap booze, tobacco and something neither of them has ever known.

_Home._

They don't talk about home because there's no home to speak of. Instead, they spend the remainder of the night building one for themselves.

 

_At the end of the world or the last thing I see_

 

At first, he doesn't even notice the bullet entering his chest. But the battle around him becomes quieter by the moment, the shouts and screams are muffled, and he feels his body go slack.

Drawing shallow breaths, his lips form the words he can't say out loud.

_I'm sorry, Klaus. Don't die. Please._

_Please, stay with me._

And suddenly, a pair of arms grabs him and turns him over.

Klaus screams for the medics, even though they both know they won't come. He presses his hands on the wound, trying to stop the bleeding, and Dave watches the blood stain his hands, painting the pale skin crimson red.

Wet hands caress his face. A broken voice begs him to stay alive.

He looks up and through the haze of blood loss and tears his eyes find Klaus'. They are green. Not the intense green of the jungle they've come to fear. A soft green.

A green like meadows in spring, like the watercolour the children in his class liked best. Like hope, not destruction.

Like home.

 

_If I died, we'd be together_

 

It's not until his head hits the pavement and the sobs whack his body so hard he can't even breathe that his brain starts processing that Dave is _dead_. Dead, gone, lost in another timeline; another unknown soldier leaving the small world around him in shreds and thousands of broken pieces, and yet so insignificant to the great cause.

His hands are bloody, and he still feels Dave's life running through his fingers and how there was nothing he could do but cry and scream and _beg_. Useless, once again unable to protect anyone, he's failed, failed, _failed_.

And he's all alone.

Klaus wonders, if Dave will join the ghosts under his bed tonight. Then again, he's never been lucky.

A small voice in his head screams for oblivion, to end this eternal torture and find peace instead. He's never fully belonged in the land of the living anyway, maybe it's better that way, it must be – what's left for him, _of him_?

(Another Klaus made a promise ten months ago, the promise to fight and stay alive. What a moron. But the Dave in his memory smiles, his eyes sparkle and he's _breathing_ ; warm skin and a steady heartbeat under Klaus' fingers.)

_But Dave is dead._ He died an hour or fifty years ago, with nobody to bury him but someone to mourn his passing. Someone to remember.

Klaus stands up, slowly. His legs are trembling, his breath hitches, and it takes whatever small scrap of control over his body he has left to put one foot in front of the other.

He doesn't know why his feet carry him to the Academy, maybe they still associate the place with home.

In his heart, he knows that home has never been a place and that he has no home to go to.

 

_You are never coming home_


End file.
